October 16, 2006

That's novelist Caleb Carr's theory for why Yale lawprof Jed Rubenfel's novel "The Interpretation of Murder" is not selling well (despite the publisher's $500,000 publicity campaign and all the free PR reaped from the news that Rubenfeld got an $800,000 advance). In other news, Rubenfeld is trailing badly in the "America's hottest male law school dean" contest. I think these two stories are linked, though. He's already got the $800,000 advance, so no way we're voting for him as hottest dean. That's rational, right?

Has the world ever believed that rational thought will solve our problems? You look back at human history and there's not a whole hell of a lot of rationality to be found. Rationality takes a discipline that not many people have.

As a counterargument I would point to the remarkable popularity of "CSI"-variety forensic police shows. They may rely on ensemble casts instead of a single brilliant Englishman, but their stories still center around the same principle: the use of reason, by experts, to solve seemingly incomprehensible crimes.

I'm with Theo B (and Goya) on this one. The "world" has never believed more ardently that "rational thought" is the best way to "solve our problems," even if some problems will always remain beyond solution. For pop fiction writers, though, it may be that they think the reading public today prefers the occult and the paranormal. No surprise that Caleb Carr would think so.

I haven't read Rubenfeld's book, but murder mysteries don't appeal much to me. Too formulaic, and usually populated by cardboard characters spouting cliches. It's just amazing that a publisher would fork over such a huge advance for a first novel by a law prof. Fiction by an unknown is hard to sell to a publisher in the best of times. Perhaps Rubenfeld had an uncle in the business. If so, that's a pretty rational business model (at least for Rubenfeld).